When should you focus on sales when building software

[achevalier]

Since March 2023, I've been building my software company, transitioning to full-time commitment since June when I made the decision to leave my job.

Throughout the journey, we undergone significant shifts in our revenue model, initially experimenting with a combination of free and paid features before transitioning to a subscription-based model for the entire product.

Despite our efforts in product development and feature enhancements, we've encountered a frustrating roadblock: a lack of sales.My partner, who juggles part-time freelance work and product's design/ marketing efforts, seems like he is not invested in sales.

While we have a robust product that stands tall against competitors, our struggle lies in converting client. It's evident that we need to reassess our sales and marketing strategies, perhaps seeking outside expertise or exploring alternative approaches to reach our target audience effectively.

What approach would you recommend ?

 

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[Bounce Back]

From day 1, preferably day 0.

 

[Kung Fu Steve]

From day 1, preferably day 0.

Seconded.

I'll subtract a day, so day -1.

 

[achevalier]

Seconded.

I'll subtract a day, so day -1.

Well, taking those responses into account I think I'm going to shift from adding more features to improving the communication of the value proposal and acquiring new customers, thanks for the tip guy.

 

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[Andy Black]

I'm going to shift from adding more features to improving the communication of the value proposal and acquiring new customers

Good.

This might help:

HOT! - MINDSET - Stop Building Stuff

Stop Building Stuff (Originally posted here and then here.) I worked for a company that was building a content creation platform. I worked for a startup that was building a new social network. I worked for another company that was building a call centre. I've had many many clients that were...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Also, the first row of links in my signature.

 

[achevalier]

Good.

This might help:

HOT! - MINDSET - Stop Building Stuff

Stop Building Stuff (Originally posted here and then here.) I worked for a company that was building a content creation platform. I worked for a startup that was building a new social network. I worked for another company that was building a call centre. I've had many many clients that were...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Also, the first row of links in my signature.

Thank you, Andy it was some very useful reading, I appreciate the recommendations.

 

[Andy Black]

Thank you, Andy it was some very useful reading, I appreciate the recommendations.

Reply here or there with your insights and takeaways. What will you do different going forward?

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Despite our efforts in product development and feature enhancements, we've encountered a frustrating roadblock: a lack of sales.My partner, who juggles part-time freelance work and product's design/ marketing efforts, seems like he is not invested in sales.

That's your problem right here, most software developers think that more features = more money. And that is not correct , especially when starting a new product.

Your second error was to quit your job without having any sales. Unless you can turn this ship around quickly, aka make enough money from your product to live on (after expenses and after taxes), I suggest you start working part time so that you don't go through your savings too quickly.

Stop building features and start talking to your users and understand what they want.

Why are they not converting? Did you ask them?
How many chats do you have with your users each week?
Do you collect feedback? If so how?
How is your SEO game?

Those are the questions you need to answer yesterday.

 

[NervesOfSteel]

...

 

[achevalier]

Reply here or there with your insights and takeaways. What will you do different going forward?

Thanks for pushing me to articulate my plan.

Thanks to the new knowledge gathered on this forum my plan for the following weeks is the following:

1. Define the value I provide to my customers
2. Re-work the pricing scheme as he is not well thought, out due to having listened to external people (big mistake)
3. Move our landing page to WordPress so that we can iterate more easily and save dev time. (This is gonna allow us to have a better landing page where we highlight more clearly the two previous points).
4. Transit my time from dev to business, I will now only spend the first 4 hours of my day doing dev as I still have to manage my team.

That's the 4 biggest take away for this month.

I'm gonna be focusing on onboarding my first client.

However I still think that I need to refine this plan, as nothing is perfect at first, but will time I'll get closer.

 

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[achevalier]

That's your problem right here, most software developers think that more features = more money. And that is not correct , especially when starting a new product.

Your second error was to quit your job without having any sales. Unless you can turn this ship around quickly, aka make enough money from your product to live on (after expenses and after taxes), I suggest you start working part time so that you don't go through your savings too quickly.

Stop building features and start talking to your users and understand what they want.

Why are they not converting? Did you ask them?
How many chats do you have with your users each week?
Do you collect feedback? If so how?
How is your SEO game?

Those are the questions you need to answer yesterday.

Exactly that's the problem we have with my co-founder coming from a tech background we took this approach.

However we already did a product market fit before starting so we have a clear view of what our customers want (at least we think so, we need to confirm it with real usage). I think the biggest problem with a lack of customers now is due to not spending enough time reaching out to clients and making them onboard (which is equal to 0 hours since September... cause my partner wanted to focus on feature building).

It's true that quitting my job was not the easiest solution tho I have managed to get by cause I still live with my parents and I do work as a Freelancer on the side from time to time.

 

[Andy Black]

I get the feeling it would help you to have more conversations with clients and prospects.

 

[Tau Ceti]

However we already did a product market fit before starting so we have a clear view of what our customers want (at least we think so, we need to confirm it with real usage).

I respectfully disagree.

Either you have product market fit and in this case you would not be here asking for help or you don't.

I'm gonna be focusing on onboarding my first client.

That's what I am talking about.

I think you need to take a step back and spend a week and schedule as many one on one meetings with potential customers and see if your vision for the product actually aligns with their needs.

It seems to me you think you have the product market fit but the lack of sales is a clear indicator that you don't.

Listen to the market, forget your assumptions and start from scratch.

If you are lucky, then your potential users will tell you exactly what you need to do to turn this around. Maybe it's a few small tweaks but maybe it's something bigger.

Without knowing, you are just shooting in the dark, wasting time and money.

I still have to manage my team.

What team?

You have no sales and therefore no revenue. You don't need a team at this point. You should let them go and refocus on sales for the next few months.

Then when you can afford to pay yourself a salary each month and you are left with some extra cash, you can hire some freelancers for a few weeks to help you release some new features if needed. Until then, you should reduce your payroll to the bare minimum to extend your runway.

 

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[achevalier]

I get the feeling it would help you to have more conversations with clients and prospects.

I have indeed been more focused on building the product rather than talking to clients as I was relying on my partner to do so, but I think that's a mistake and that I should also get involved in this process.

 

[achevalier]

What team?

You have no sales and therefore no revenue. You don't need a team at this point. You should let them go and refocus on sales for the next few months.

Then when you can afford to pay yourself a salary each month and you are left with some extra cash, you can hire some freelancers for a few weeks to help you release some new features if needed. Until then, you should reduce your payroll to the bare minimum to extend your runway. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Well, it's free work cause they're interns, it allows me to only spend about an hour a day managing and giving them work while they're still delivering features and improvements to the website, tho the features we are building have been asked for by clients during our product market fit.

In 2019 my partner released the first version of the product and onboarded around 20 ich clients in a month, with a lesser product. He also collected feedback about how he could improve the project, tho he had to drop it cause the dev costs were too expensive for him at the time (dumb story).

Then last year I hoped on and we made an MVP-improved version of the product, tried to sell it during the summer got some feedback, but we realised our sales technique was not the best at first and that secondly client would not have joined with only what we have they were like "yeah ok this is great, but it's not useful tho those features are".

So I agree that my focus needs to shift from product-oriented work to client-oriented work. I'm currently working on making a demo of our product for some clients.